Along with the rapid development of Internet and the popularity of large-screen multi-functional mobile phones, a large number of mobile data multimedia services and various kinds of high-bandwidth multimedia services, such as video conference, television broadcast, video on demand, advertisement, online education, interactive game and the like, have appeared. On one hand, this satisfies the rising service needs of mobile users, and also brings new service growth points for a mobile operator. The mobile data multimedia service requests that a plurality of users can receive the same data at the same time. Compared to the general data service, the mobile data multimedia service has the features of large volume of data, long duration, sensitive time delay and the like.
In order to use the mobile network resource effectively, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (referred to as 3GPP) puts forward an MBMS service. The service is a technology to transmit data from a data source to a plurality of targets, realizes the sharing of the network (including core network and access network) resource and improves the utilization rate of the network resource (in particular the air interface resource). The MBMS defined by 3GPP not only can realize message multicasting and broadcasting in a plain text form at a low rate, but also can realize multicasting and broadcasting of high speed multimedia service and provide a variety of video, audio and multimedia services. This undoubtedly conforms to the trend of future mobile data development and provides a better service prospect for the development of 3G.
The MBMS service is characterized by large volume of data, long duration for a UE (User Equipment) reception and constant average data rate. The above features determine that the scheduling of the MBMS service and control signaling configuration are semi-static, that is, the scheduling information of the MBMS service and control signaling information keep unchanged for a long time; so the system side transmits an unchanged information (continuous transmission is because a new user may access at any time) in a cycle of each MCCH (maximum Multipoint Control Channel) information. In this way, it is unnecessary for a UE having received the MCCH information to receive unchanged MCCH information every time, which will cause the UE to consume electricity; because the amount of MCCH information is large, more electricity will be consumed during the information reception and analysis. As a result, it is put forward to add MCCH information update indication information (referred to as MCCH change notification or MBMS notification indicator in English, MBMS notification message, MBMS notification information, MBMS notification indication or MBMS notification indication information and the like in Chinese; thereinafter the MBMS notification indication information taken as example), describes by a small amount of physical layer information whether the MCCH information has changed, so that the accessed UE only needs to monitor a small amount of information and then determines whether to receive the MCCH information according to the MBMS notification indication information, which plays the effect of saving electricity.
Additionally, since the MBMS service transmitted in a cell can belong to different MBMS service sending areas, that is, the MBMS service sending areas may be overlapped, in an evolved MBMS (eMBMS) system, there may be a plurality of MCCHs in one cell; each MCCH corresponds to a different MBMS service sending area, in which control information of the MBMS service which is sent corresponding to the MBMS service sending area is only borne. The number of the MCCHs depends on the MBMS service generating area of the service assigned in the cell. Therefore, the number of the MCCHs is changeable. At present, the agreement stipulates that a cell supports to the maximum of 8 MBMS service sending areas. That is to say, a cell supports to the maximum of 8 MCCH channels.
In LTE, it has already been determined to introduce the MBMS notification indication information nowadays. However, no conclusion has been reached about the problems that on which physical control channel the MBMS notification indication information will be borne, how to support the notification of a plurality of MCCHs, etc.